Tuesday, 3 June 2014

Norway 2014

The second Norway Super GM (after 2013) begins today. Interestingly the major sponsor is a Malta based Online Gaming Company (Unibet), but due to Norwegian legislation, they could not put their logo on any of the publicity material. So the event is known as "No Logo Norway Chess", although telling this story probaly helps the generate at least some publicity.
While the tournament starts today. yesterday saw a blitz event to determine seeding numbers. Top seed Magnus Carlsen finished on top with 7.5/9 (+6=3) ahead of second seed Lev Aronian. In the first round of the main tournament Carlsen is white against Giri, while Aronian has white against Agdestein.
In terms of who is to win, is is pretty easy to tip Carlsen, although he only came second last year, to Sergey Karjakin. I'd like to see Aronian do well, while Karjakin and Caruana are the players 'most likely' if Carlsen slips.
The official tournament website is here, and you can follow all the action online.